alt Hacker NewsI just want to buy a "Stupid TV" I wonder if such a brand would sell very sell "JustWatch TV" people in stores seeing how quickly it turns on, and just works, no internet questions, just a TV working. Must be revolutionary, can't believe we never thought of having TVs without an entire invasive OS that slows down the entire TV...
Every smart TV I own never gets internet access, ever. I just plug a real device that connects to the internet instead, they're a much faster and better experience.
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> just a TV working
I think to be considered a television, you still need to be able to receive OTA broadcasts. With modern digital television, that now means you need a H264 (H265, soon maybe) decoder.
I don't know if you can do that cheaper than a SoC, which makes adding "smartness" (even if it's bad) not that much more expensive.
It's getting hard to get a dumb TV.
Try getting a display panel, like one of those used in restaurants to display menus.
Everyone here talking about how hard it is to get one.
My 2018 Samsung TV has smart features, but is not internet connected. It turns on quickly and right to the selected source - no brain cells harmed having to look at ads. It slightly bugs out sometimes, but I assume this to be a general issue.
You are looking for a very large monitor. They are very expensive. TVs are large monitors subsidized by their adware.
The thing is "smart tvs" are actually cheaper than dumb tvs would be, specifically because they can make money on the advertising.
Anyway, google TVs (like my TCL tv) let you use them in dumb mode, which is what I do. I just have it wired to my Apple TV 4k (the least bad of the smart tv boxes that support HDCP) and thats good enough for me.
You may want that but you won't like its unsubsidised price.
Like it or not it's no longer viable to sell to consumers at "cost plus margin" - you're sold a loss-making unit and the size of the loss is based on how much LTV they expect of you.
Be happy it's cheaper for you, but be aware that as an informed consumer who's not plugging in your device you have negative LTV and are thus not the product's target customer and sadly are actually kind of leeching off their business model.
I'm sure you wouldn't do that if you had a choice. But the old business model is unviable now so no one's left except these jerks.
But hey, cheap TVs!
Not sure, but I heard that special Hotel TVs are basically that. They don't seem to be more expensive.
It's usually possible to buy a regular tv, and just never turn on/activate the internal "smarts" by never connecting it to the internet.
Only use an external device.
There are stupid TVs but they're more expensive since they don't have an ad subsidy.
I'm doing what you are - just don't connect it and you can enjoy ridiculously low prices on TVs.